Schmidt admits that he thought the "don't be evil" slogan was stupid when he first came to Google

In a recent interview with NPR, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said that he used to think his company's famous slogan -- "don't be evil" -- was stupid.

NPR host Peter Sagal interviewed Schmidt recently on a segment called "Not My Job," which humorously speaks with important leaders and includes a game of some sort.

Sagal asked Schmidt how Google came up with the slogan, "don't be evil."

"Well, it was invented by Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin]," said Schmidt. "And the idea was that we don't quite know what evil is, but if we have a rule that says don't be evil, then employees can say, I think that's evil. Now, when I showed up, I thought this was the stupidest rule ever, because there's no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something.

"So what happens is, I'm sitting in this meeting, and we're having this debate about an advertising product. And one of the engineers pounds his fists on the table and says, that's evil. And then the whole conversation stops, everyone goes into conniptions, and eventually we stopped the project. So it did work."

Sagal then humorously accused Schmidt of being the "businessman" type out of the group (among Page and Brin) who felt that an American business couldn't be evil.

"You're coming in, like, you're a businessman who's been successful in all kinds of Silicon Valley business," said Sagal. "And you come in, and you're like this thing about not being evil, that'll never work in American business. What, are you crazy, kids?"

Sagal and Schmidt discussed a few other topics as well, such as Google Glass. Sagal asked Schmidt what the glasses are used for exactly.

"Well, we don't quite know yet," said Schmidt. "We have maybe 2,000 of these. We've shipped them out to developers, and we're seeing what they develop. There's obviously issues, shall we say, of appropriateness of how people are going to use these things. There's a right time to have Google Glass on, and there's a right time to have it off, if you take my drift.

"So kind of watch and see what people do with it and then decide what to do."

Our teleportation might be like that but they have technobabble in Star Trek that makes transportation an actual transmission of the original person to the point where you can stay conscious during transportation in some cases.

Even the accident that duplicated Riker resulted in a "real" and "fake" Riker (as in the "fake" one is subtly but definitely different from the actual original in a detectable way).

In science-fiction, teleportation is the destruction (often misleadingly referred to as disassembly or something like it) of your body into energy/special particles which are then transmitted somewhere and "reassembled" (in actuality, recreated).

So the original you IS destroyed. However, the new person is also you.

I doubt the dead version of you would care if they transmitted information only, or the actual particles themselves, as eithe way you ARE being killed when you teleport somewhere.

Of course, there's also things like bending space-time rather than actually teleporting, which would not require you to die. Although there may well be forces involved that would rip you to shreds and kill you, this would merely be a conincidence and not, strictly speaking, caused by the instantaneous travel.

Well, technically destroying something IS converting it. It's energy (and mass) that can't be destroyed, not matter. Also Einstein did not discover the Laws of Conservation of mass and energy.

Also, if you're talking about the matter, yes "you" are destroyed. The reason you aren't really destroyed is because "you" aren't really [just] matter. We had some inkling of that all those millenia ago, which is why [WARNING: I'M AN ATHEIST] we created the concept of spirit. The "information" sent by the transporter used to recreate you is as equivalent and exact to a soul as anything ever was. Technically (no, actually) we're talking about transhumanism here.

Star Trek uses the "matter stream" term to let it be know that the original is never destroyed (barring transporter accidents). It's still a bit tricky - you are being disassembled and reassembled from a "pattern buffer" which can store your pattern for potentially years (e.g. the ST:TNG episode with Scotty).

This stuff is over your head I guess. Sure it's science fiction, but claiming the Transporters kill you and create a clone of you in your place is absurd.

Also we know from watching the show that you are conscious during transport. The technology of the show is fantastic, but I'm pretty sure the transporter doesn't have mechanisms to transfer your consciousness and the entirety of your life experiences and memories into a new body.

"transfer your consciousness and the entirety of your life experiences and memories into a new body."Consciousness and memories are function of your brain. When you transport and assemble it back together then you are perfectly yourself again.'entirety of your life'?? What do you mean? I have never seen anyone being eternal by any means.